A call for people-oriented benevolent governance on culture

雨露甘霑

A call for people-oriented benevolent governance on culture

By Thomas Yeung

July 13, 2012 -10:41am http://www.chinadailyapac.com

China Daily  

In recent years, themainland’s export of cultural products and cultural services has increased atmuch higher rates than Hong Kong. China Central Television, Xinhua News Agencyand other large State-run media organizations have been busy setting upregional offices in major cities around the world, while advertisementspromoting “new China” were shown on large screens in Wall Street, New York.Confucius Institutes are increasing at an accelerated rate in many countries,educating foreigners on Chinese language and culture. “Soft power” packed inChinese culture is now influencing people worldwide.

As a cosmopolitancity in East Asia guided by the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”, HongKong is a valuable help for the country to increase and spread its “softpower”. However, the city has seen a rapid decline in traditional culturalidentity and heritage. The city is also slow to develop other culture-related industriesand shows low competitiveness in global cultural development. Only a fewserious thinkers in Hong Kong have tried to draw public attention to thecultural root problems, calling on society to preserve traditional culturalcore values, revitalize local culture and reinvigorate local culturalindustries in the HKSAR. The goal is to rejuvenate the profound and excellentcultural core values and virtues prevalent in a vast region commonly known as“Lingnan” in Chinese. The region covers all of Guangxi, Guangdong (includingHong Kong) and Hainan provinces and some parts of Hunan and Jiangxi provincesin South China.

The SAR governmenthas not identified and resolved the core issues of cultural policy. Advocacygroups and advisory groups tend to over-emphasize certain bits and pieces ofthe whole culture scene in Hong Kong. Cultural policies, like all otherpolicies, have to be effective and efficient in cost and time, responding tofast-changing situations, and they have to be strategized with a people-orientedbenevolent governance approach.

For instance, theWest Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) has long been positioned as “a worldclass cultural hub” without an Asian vision or clear cultural identity.Furthermore, the site has been left unused and undeveloped for more than 10years, a proof of inefficiency and loss of cultural directions.

From adecision-making perspective, a well-integrated and optimized holistic conceptand governance framework is nowhere to be found in the administrative philosophyof the HKSAR government. At the same time, the identification and maintenanceof cultural core values and their implementation to yield cultural crops andnurture related enterprises are mostly disintegrated and misaligned. Thegovernment was challenged on the poor alignment of various smaller constituentcultural parts (such as fine arts, heritage, traditional culture, education,languages and religions), and between core cultural policies and every otherpolicy (such as housing, tourism and immigration).

From the perspectiveof culture-related sectors, the decisions taken by the local government todeploy “cultural resources” are regarded as ineffective, because the governmentneither showed adequate support to the culturally related field, nor was itcommunicative. Many of the practitioners feel that they are not on the sameboat with bureaucrats, i.e., the government decision makers and administrators.However, in the cultural field, many practitioners show neither high respectfor each other nor do they provide the government with a strategic long-termcultural plan.

Most Hong Kongresidents know little about cultural policies and cultural industrydevelopment. They commonly spend their time and money on ephemeral andperipheral contents of art and cultures. A couple of events signaled theirdissatisfaction with local cultural products and services. For instance, manypublic activists and residents are questioning whether they can benefit fromthe WKCD. Another event is the decline of the music industry due to thehomogenization and standardization of cultural products.

The decline of localculture and the slow development of cultural and creative industries trulyreflect the long-lasting neglect by various key stakeholders, including thegovernment, the cultural sectors and the citizens. In this regard, apeople-oriented benevolent governance framework, which integrates governmentpolicies with various stakeholders (such as civil society and private sectors),key drivers (such as history, traditions and technology) and factors (such assustainability), are needed to make cultural vision clearer and to win betterlocal support and co-working relationships in future cultural developments.

Hong Kong needs sucha people-oriented governmental policy making and implementation. Cultural corevalues, cultural and creative industries must thoroughly and optimally beintegrated in a series of committed plans, in the processes of reinvigoratingthe local cultural sector. The proposed establishment of the Cultural Bureau ispossibly a good option to execute people-oriented, holistic, andcommunity-driven cultural policies.

The author is theConvener of Policy Research, City Think Tank.